Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

IBM BPM vs Red Hat Polymita Business Suite comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM BPM
Ranking in Business Process Management (BPM)
8th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
110
Ranking in other categories
Application Infrastructure (7th), Process Automation (5th)
Red Hat Polymita Business S...
Ranking in Business Process Management (BPM)
50th
Average Rating
10.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Business Process Management (BPM) category, the mindshare of IBM BPM is 7.6%, down from 7.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Polymita Business Suite is 0.1%, down from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Process Management (BPM)
 

Featured Reviews

Mohammed Almalki - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers good case management and its integration with process design but there's a learning curve
If you're already an IBM shop with the necessary skills and personnel, then I would recommend using it. However, it requires a yearly investment. So, if you're prepared for that, then go for it. New users will need at least six months to get comfortable with IBM BPM, at least initially. So, there's a learning curve. Overall, I would rate the solution a seven out of ten. Two main reasons: the skillset required to manage it and its integration complexity.
LY
Gives you the ability to design the screens outside the software and connect them as a component with the BPM engine
On the improvement part, I think the documentation for the tool, the official documentation, is not as strong as in other tools. You have lot of community. That is good. But sometimes you need - when you are working on a big client or a critical process - to be certain about certain things. So I think that the documentation for the tool, from the company, could be a little stronger. Also, the size of the team within Latin America. The size of the team that, in each country, knows about BPM - because of the size of Red Hat in comparison with the size of IBM or Oracle - is very little. You have maybe three or four people in the company, in Red Hat Mexico, that know about BPM; and in Peru, maybe one, who also needs to know about five other tools. You have help there, but sometimes you don't need that kind of help. You need to sit down with someone and take a good amount of time and discuss a process to solve a problem. It's a consequence of the size. IBM and Oracle are monsters. They have, say, 100 more employees than Red Hat. That is the problem. But on the other side, the price is good. You could pay four times less, five times less, in an average implementation with Red Hat than with IBM. So there is a trade-off.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The solution is more customizable than IBM FileNet."
"IBM BPM is both scalable and stable."
"The performance is fine."
"Automating the whole workflow process to give our data steward the ability to take actions rapidly, and making sure we have all the data synced within the different platforms that we are using."
"Its Analytics is the most valuable feature."
"The integration capabilities of IBM BPM are excellent."
"Setting it up is fairly easy. If somebody has knowledge of the system, he or she will be able to do it fairly quickly."
"IBM BPM's best features include document sharing, management document creation, widget and barcode creation, and integration."
"The main factor that separates Red Hat software from Oracle, IBM, Pegasystems, is the ability that it gives you to design the screens outside the software and connect it as another component with the BPM engine."
 

Cons

"New users will need at least six months to get comfortable with IBM BPM, at least initially. So, there's a learning curve."
"We are a government organization, and we are the largest government power sector in India. We generate around 30% of power in India. Therefore, our processes are quite complex. Although IBM BPM is a low-code or no-code software, if you want to have extremely complex workflows, just the business process diagrams are not helpful in creating those workflows. While implementing complex workflows, only the process flow diagrams did not help us. We had to write a lot of Java scripts and Java queries to achieve what we wanted. Its integration capabilities with the SAP environment have to be improved. At present, we are only talking at the web services environment level. Its price also needs to be improved. It is currently expensive. Previously, Active Directory required a heterogeneous environment, but now they want a homogeneous environment. We had onboarded employees through Microsoft Active Directory, and now I have to implement Microsoft AD only from the cloud for my vendors."
"When you have to integrate files for enterprise applications."
"The analysis reports could be much better."
"The stability varies because it involves a lot of other components like databases, so sometimes if something goes wrong there, it can't recover from the fatal errors."
"The integration could be improved."
"They should incorporate an API gateway functionality within it to simplify integrations."
"It's a bit technical, related to the instance of migrations. It's a tough thing to handle, in every new release, in every upgrade, that we have to do things in the applications or in the product. I think IBM is working on it but I know there are a lot of requests coming in from different organizations on this."
"I think the documentation for the tool, the official documentation, is not as strong as in other tools. You have lot of community. That is good. But sometimes you need - when you are working on a big client or a critical process - to be certain about certain things. So I think that the documentation for the tool, from the company, could be a little stronger."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's expensive. All software is always extremely high. The manufacturing cost that we have compared to the selling cost, it's not like you're building a house or building a car. But putting that aside, considering that it's expensive, it's a lot of money. If you compare it with some of the other alternatives in the market, it's a similar price. For instance, if you compare it with Pegasystems, it's a similar price."
"I think it's a reasonably priced tool, but it's important to consider which customers should buy this solution. It's designed for enterprise customers, not small ones."
"The price of the solution is fair for an enterprise solution that has both cloud and on-premise deployments and when comparing to competitors. Recently IBM has introduced Cloud Pak which allows for more flexible licensing options for automation and other features."
"I give the pricing an eight out of ten."
"I already compared some solutions related to business process management, and I saw that the cost of IBM BPM is more expensive compared with that of Camunda, for example."
"On a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the pricing a ten."
"Starting out with Express can also help reduce the cost for adopting the product."
"It has a low cost to implement. You'll get your money back in the same year that you complete the project."
"Without any discount, you need tools that cost roughly between $80,000 to $100,000. That is less than with IBM. And on top of that you need the consulting. That will be another $200,000. So a quarter to a third of a million dollars is needed to use get started with BPM. So I usually recommend to my clients that they begin with a little project, with the community version. That way they don't spend $200,000 or $300,000, they spend $150,000 and zero on software."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Business Process Management (BPM) solutions are best for your needs.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
30%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Which is better, IBM BPM or IBM Business Automation Workflow?
We researched both IBM solutions and in the end, we chose Business Automation Workflow. IBM BPM has a good user interface and the BPM coach is a helpful tool. The API is very useful in providing en...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Comparisons

No data available
 

Also Known As

WebSphere Lombardi Edition, IBM Business Process Manager, IBM WebSphere Process Server
Polymita Business Suite
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Barclays, EmeriCon, Banca Popolare di Milano, CST Consulting, KeyBank, KPMG, Prolifics, Sandhata Technologies Ltd., State of Alaska, Humana S.A., Saperion, esciris, Banco Espirito Santo
Bayer, Grupo Televisa, RCBC, Peavey
Find out what your peers are saying about Camunda, Apache, Pega and others in Business Process Management (BPM). Updated: November 2024.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.